Building

“ I watch the workman build upon the building which by and by is to soar into the skies, to toss its pinnacles up to the heaven, and I see him looking up and wondering where those pinnacles are to be, thinking how high they are to be, measuring the feet, wondering how they are to be built, and all the time he is cramming a rotten stone into the building just where he has set to work. ”

“ As you go nearer, the vastness of the building impresses you more and more. The puny dwelling-place of the citizens creep at its feet, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes the twilight is darkening. ”

“ No building, however gracefully designed, can ever attain the perfection of its beauty till Time has placed his finishing touches thereon, toning down this and tinting that, rounding off a too-sharp angle here, and making rugged a too-smooth corner there, adorning the walls with ivy and clinging creepers, and decorating the roof with lustrous lichen! ”

“ The extensive building—built like an immense bohea around a square court, and with a grated door, is situated by the sea, which bathes with its roaring waves the rocky walls at its feet, and surrounds the home of the sick with its breezes, fraught with life and health. ”

“ Equally so was it with the art of building—a living allegory in which man imitated in miniature [155] the world-temple, and sought by every device to discover the secret of its stability. Already we have shown how, from earliest times, the simple symbols of the builder became a part of the very life of humanity, giving shape to its thought, its faith, its dream. ”

“ It has given undue prominence to a little building that stands some way up the place, a building of strict utility with no pretensions to architectural consideration, a building which now stands out exposed as it were, trying to hide its confusion under a mask of gaudy advertisement posters. ”

“ A beautiful building declares its function and use, satisfies us with the logic and coherence of its parts, and delights us with its reticence or its boldness, its simplicity or its inventiveness, in fine, its personality, as expressed in its parts and their confluence into an ordered, self-contained, and self-sufficing whole. ”

“ Some of the houses are handsome, but the greater number have a compressed, squeezed-up aspect, which arises from the compulsory narrowness of frontage in proportion to the height of the building, and all of them are bright and new, as if they were just finished to order,—a most astonishing proof of the rapid development of the city. ”

“ Then when the roofs and passages about the building are mounted it is seen that the great object of the architect has been simply to obtain one grand effect—that of height and airiness, and that to this everything has been sacrificed, the details throughout being poor, coarse, and slovenly in their mode of execution. ”

“ Instead of being parcelled out in great, long, rambling wards, where a certain amount of weazen life may mope, and pine, and shiver, all day long, the building is divided into separate rooms, each with its share of light and air. ”

“ THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE
I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building.
To build—literally, to confirm—is by common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. ”

“ ARCHITECTURE may be described as building at its best, and when we talk of the architecture of any city or country we mean its best, noblest, or most beautiful buildings; and we imply by the use of the word that these buildings possess merits which entitle them to rank as works of art.
The architecture of the civilised world can be best understood by considering the great buildings of each important nation separately. The features, ornaments, and even forms of ancient buildings differed just as the speech, or at any rate the literature, differed. ”

“ If you point out any part of the building as superfluous, he insists that it is material to the strength or decoration of the rest and the harmony of the whole, and swears that the parts are so built into each other that if you pull down one, you run the risk of having the whole about your ears. ”

“ Connors the well-nigh shapeless mass defined itself into a building, and the erect projection at its top into a modest steeple, proclaiming it a “meeting-house.” A church on a hill, in the middle of the night, offers little encouragement to a man seeking living aid. ”

“ The site of a noble building, erected for our Government, was adorned by wide-spreading trees, the growth of generations, which, after the building was completed, the architect cut down before his axe could be arrested. ”

“ Bricks—and Other Things
It is a mistake when you are going to build a city to make too large a collection of building materials before you begin to build. If it is natural to you to express yourself by pencil lines on paper you might perhaps draw an outline of the masses of your city as you see them in the architect's vision or illumination which should precede all building, either of magic cities or municipal cab-shelters. ”

“ Thus we have church building, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify; but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ”

“ In all classes of building, whether ecclesiastical, military, monastic, civic, domestic, commercial, or rustic, though the architecture was in reality one and the same, the treatment was absolutely and imperatively commanded by the purpose, and the expression followed by instinct. ”

“ THE NEW ARCHITECTURE IN the centre of the new city is something like a long train of box cars—yet when you see their sides you find they are houses. As you look they grow—and from a few holes in the ground till the building is finished takes about forty-five minutes, the architects tell me. ”

“ Many private houses were strengthened and fortified. We remember one familiar to our boyhood,— a venerable old building of wood, with brick between the weather boards and ceiling, with a massive balustrade over the door, constructed of oak timber and plank, with holes through the latter for firing upon assailants. ”

“ The architecture of the building is admirably simple and firm; and you remark about it, and all other works here, a high finish in doors, wood-works, paintings, &c., that one does not see in France, where the buildings are often rather sketched than completed, and the artist seems to neglect the limbs, as it were, and extremities of his figures. ”

“ You're ever building, building to the clouds, Still building higher, and still higher building, And ne'er reflect, that the poor narrow basis Cannot sustain the giddy tottering column. ”

“ A building may be well arranged for all purposes of mere convenience, but in reality, if destitute of harmony in its outward appearance, it cannot be called an architectural construction. This remark will apply to the buildings in our country generally, and equally, as stated, to those of England and France. ”

“ We can now be quite methodical and workman-like in our building, and can learn to use all the parts economically and according to principle. We can discuss ground plans, cellars, foundations, basements, roofs, eaves, chimneys, entrances, and windows, and thus can make almost habitable dwellings and miniature models of larger objects. ”

“ Building is, in its turn, divided into two parts, of which the first is the construction of fortified towns and of works for general use in public places, and the second is the putting up of structures for private individuals. ”

“ What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home. ”

“ The essential elementary parts of a building are those which contribute to its support, inclosure, and covering; and of these the most important are the foundation, the column, the wall, the lintel, the arch, the vault, the dome, and the roof. ”

“ Having laid out the alleys and determined the streets, we have next to treat of the choice of building sites for temples, the forum, and all other public places, with a view to general convenience and utility. ”

“ This is beautifully illustrated in architecture, where a monotonous multiplication of like elements is replaced by figures of differentiated elements. No longer is a uniform facade recognized as beautiful, but a variety of features in a variety of elements must be presented in order that a temple, a mart, an executive building, or a business structure may be considered as a pleasing example of architecture. ”

“ The building, or group of buildings, is six stories high, with a sky-line that reflects the range of mountains under which Grasse nestles. Windows of different sizes, placed without symmetry or alignment, do not even harmonize with the roof above them. ”

“ For this book does not show of what architecture is composed, but treats of the origin of the building art, how it was fostered, and how it made progress, step by step, until it reached its present perfection. ”

“ A building that presents the outward appearance of a substantial two-or three-storied dwelling-house with many rooms, shrinks into a dismal and draughty collection of stables, courtyards, and dungeon-like living-rooms, when one gets inside. ”

“ When you want to erect a new municipal building or a new cathedral, having settled the requirements, practical or hygienic, that the building must serve, you call in the artist to give form to the building, that it may express by its beauty something more, something which throughout the ages every race of man has felt to be necessary to the completion of his work ”

“ But the architect who placed each block in its proper niche, who planned and designed the whole elevation, who planted the building firmly on the rock and poised the coping-stone on the topmost pinnacle, was the author of the 'System of Synthetic Philosophy,' and none other. ”

“ Every building, however complicated and laden with ornamental lines, is at one with itself and every one of its neighbors, for the same characteristic controlling belts of color and solid strata extend with wonderful constancy for very great distances, and pass through and give style to thousands of separate structures, however their smaller characters may vary. ”

“ If now we try to call to mind some building inspired, on the whole, by classical taste and the classical spirit of design, but showing also independence and a strictly{198} modern conception, we shall find that the search is not a rewarding one. ”

“ We may, in truth, be said to have no architecture at all, as exhibited in our agricultural districts, so far as any correct system, or plan is concerned, as the better taste in building, which a few years past has introduced among us, has been chiefly confined to our cities and towns of rapid growth. ”

“ Instead of being filled with air, the vast space between the walls is crowded with Nature’s grandest buildings,—a sublime city of them, painted in every color, and adorned with richly fretted cornice and battlement spire and tower in endless variety of style and architecture. Every architectural invention of man has been anticipated, and far more, in this grandest of God’s terrestrial cities. ”

“ The building of houses has in all ages formed part of the employment of man as he advanced from a state of mere barbarism to one of comparative civilization. In devoting this little volume, therefore, to the subject of the Application of the Useful Arts to the construction of Dwellings, it is necessary to set a limit to so large a subject. ”

“ "A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up in the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation." ”

“ If we are to believe the reports which are everywhere current, and if we examine the main details of the building, we must conclude that those domes which shine afar, and which cannot be discovered within 200 yards of the building itself, never will come down again. ”

“ From about these two groups, more or less harmonized by intermediate examples, but always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility—to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. ”

“ Those who contemplate building, or who wish to alter, improve, extend, or add to existing buildings, whether wings, porches, bay windows, or attic rooms, are invited to communicate with the undersigned. ”

“ Both the inhabitants of a building and the material structure which contains them, are called "a house;" and the inhabitants are frequently bitterly blamed, while the beauty of the structure is passionately admired. ”

“ The houses I may add, and especially the sacred edifices, are built in a peculiar and rather fantastic style of architecture. They are all whitewashed; so that when illumined by the brilliant sun of midday, and as seen against the pale blue sky of the horizon, they stand out more like shadows than real buildings. ”

“ The first gathers the materials, the second constructs the edifice, the third, by use, by practical application, tests whether it be a fit building to live in, whether it is constructed on sound architectural principles. ”